I was mulling over a wrap-up post for 2013, but this year has been a little weird, writing-wise, and I wasn’t sure there would be much to post. However, inspired by Chuck Wendig’s wrap-up – in which he mentions an interesting project or two that I have a hand in – I figured I should really sit down and work out what the hell I’ve been doing this year. And what I need to be doing next.

So! 2013?

Despite feeling like I haven’t done much, 2013 was a really good year for me. Having sold The Burning Dark to Tor around Easter 2012 as a standalone novel, this year I sold them two more books – The Jovian Conspiracy and The Stars Below – in the same universe. A few months later, UK and Commonwealth rights to all three books were sold to Titan. Tor revealed the amazing cover, by Will Staehle – who was also responsible for each of my Angry Robot covers – back in July.

I also wrote – and sold – Cold War, a standalone novelette set in the universe of The Burning Dark, to Tor.com.

I had one book published – The Age Atomic, a sequel to Empire State, came out from Angry Robot in April. Alongside the US and UK paperbacks came a limited, numbered collector’s edition hardcover of this title and of Empire State, complete with a new cover by Will Staehle. This made me the only Angry Robot author, so far, to have each of their novels released as a hardback.

On top of this, as Chuck mentions over at his blog, I worked with him on a comic pitch that, with a bit of luck, we’ll be able to talk about next year. Speaking of comics, the first three parts of my Prohibition urban fantasy, The Sentinel, came out as part of the VS Comics digital anthology.

Events I attended were the Sci-Fi Weekender in North Wales (I had the flu the whole weekend, and have never been so cold in all my life), EdgeLit in Derby, Andromeda One in Birmingham, Nine Worlds in London, LoneStarCon/WorldCon in San Antonio, and World Fantasy in Brighton. If I to pick a favourite, it must be Nine Worlds – from tremendous organisation to imaginative and fresh programming, this was THE event of 2013.

So, behind-the-scenes, things were pretty busy, and work-wise this was a really good year. In fact, my biggest year yet.

Writing-wise, it was an odd one. From October 2012 through to August 2013 I was editing two books at once – The Burning Dark, and Hang Wire – which was a bit of a challenge. Once those were done, I spent a couple of months outlining The Jovian Conspiracy and got that book underway.

Which means it doesn’t feel like I’ve written much this year, even though “editing” really means “rewriting and rewriting and rewriting”. It’s also hard to track, as a straight eight-hour day of work on novel edits can actually result in a negative word count. There’s probably an easy way to track it, but I haven’t tried it yet!

As for 2014…

I’m under contract to write three novels, only one of which (The Jovian Conspiracy) is due next year. I’m working on it now, and that’s the number one priority.

Once that is in, I’ve got an urban-ish fantasy novel to finish, and a crime novel to write, before I get started on The Stars Below. So that’s one novel to finish, two to start and finish, and one to at least start. Minimum. I also have another long-short story to do, although hopefully I can knock that off before the end of 2013.

That comic project with Chuck should start to kick off… and there may be a couple of other projects in this field to talk about. The final part of The Sentinel should drop from VS Comics early in the year, although that was actually written a while ago.

The only event I’m locked in for so far is WorldCon, which in 2014 is being held in London, but there’s no doubt I’ll be at other events too.

But the big thing for 2014 is that I’ve got two books out! Hang Wire is released by Angry Robot on January 28th (US/eBook) and February 6th (UK), and The Burning Dark is out March 25th from Titan (UK/Commonwealth) and Tor (US). There’s not much of a gap between them and launch-wise, we’re cooking up something big, so stay tuned. There’s also a kick-ass pre-order contest starting in January. Cold War will be out around the same time as The Burning Dark.

So that was my 2013. An odd year, but a good one. 2014 is shaping up to be much bigger and busier, which is just how it should be. Onward!